It's a miracle!

In an almost unbelievable turn of events, liz is actually sitting behind me while i type this. she is actually going to have input in this blog!

liz... take it away...

"i want to say something really powerful, you know."

thanks liz.

see! she does still exist.

liv AND liz

mmmn... so many tiaras... this shot was taken on new years eve at woodford, so it's only taken 5 months to post it... 

finally getting around to putting more woodford tiara shots on here. this shot is very indicative of sar and liz's most frequent passtime... 

our flatmate steve with puppy and puss puss 

the eternal flame 

gorgeous sar who keeps leaving us comments. unlike most people, she seems to be able to work out how to do it. why is it so hard people? no really - people keep complaining they can't post. what's happening? 

damn stupid melbourne

it was 6 degrees this morning when i went for a shower.

6 degrees.

do you know how damn cold it is to step out of the shower into 6 degree air?

by the time i got to work, it had warmed up to a balmy 8 degrees. i was almost overwhelmed with joy.

stupid melbourne.

liv

feeling homesick

ok, before i start, once again, the photos are playing up, just click on the x thing and you can see the photo. not sure why it's doing this again.

oh, and does anyone know how to put video footage on the blog? we need help or advice or something. we have some cool footage to put on here. stuff like 20 million bats, and kate etc playing, and us just being silly.

anyway, once again, we've spent the last few days hanging out with friends from home. it's always so good to see everyone, but i feel homesick after everyone goes back. oh well, it's definitely better than not seeing anyone at all.

catherine, it was superb to catch up with you again, even if you did insist on dragging mel and i to a horrible meat market! i'm kidding, it was a fun night, we just all had to leave our dignity at the door. actually, i feel very out of touch with the whole meat market thing - i kept getting shocked at the stuff people were doing (although i did appreciate the cheek of the guy who thought the right way to meet me was to put his hand in the pocket of my pants. i walked away, but i did think it was impressively cheeky...)

anyway, kate etc. were also here for the weekend doing the whitlams tour, so we got free whitlams tickets, very nice. i always feel like i'm one of "the beautiful people" when i'm hanging out with them, it's very odd.

anyway, as soon as everyone left, i caught some contagious disease with nausea, aching muscles and joints, burning rash, sensitivity to light and exhaustion as the primary symptoms. i'm fine now and going back to work tomorrow, but it was a strange couple of days.

today is the first day of ange's second trimester, so i've started making a baby rug, which is at least giving me something to do while i'm sitting around.

big thanks to ange and catherine and scotty again today for all playing therapist for me - i've been trying to work through my issues with drugs and how much i hate being around them. it's all a bit screwy, and everyone has different opinions on the whole subject. actually, all three therapists had different opinions completely, so i may now be more confused than when i started, but that's ok - i'm used to being confused about drugs.

anyway, time to stop sitting on the floor before my spine crawls out in protest, and go watch anothe episode of scrubs.

love to all, and i've been harassing liz about writing stuff, and she's compiling things now apparently so look forward to an update soon!

liv

the crazy dog photo - our flatmates when we moved to melbourne. rose, nat, ange, steve, liv, camilla, liz and nat's friend who's name i've forgotten (bad form, sorry!) 

yet another liv arty shot. i took a lot of them on my weekend away 

a liv arty shot at mittagong homestead 

taken at a winery near mittagong homestead - the whole area was beautiful and red and yellow and autumny - yay! 

our beautiful ex-flatmate nat at the butterfly house at melbourne zoo 

Mittagong Homestead

6 May 2006 Some time in the morning. At least i think it's morning. i took my watch off. it's overcast and i've not yet had breakfast - hope that helps put things in perspective.

Two things I didn't know cows could do:

1. Lick their own arse (fascinating to watch)
2. Sneeze (great puffs of moisture come out)

I was suitably impressed by both.

The first cow has ben licking itself on and off for some time now. believe it may be psychologically damaged in some way.

Am rediscovering the difficulties in trying to outstare a cow. they keep looking at me. lots of them. i'm not making this up. they look, then they moo, then they look again. they might take a quick grass break before a little more looking, but the looking appears to be this morning's primary purpose.

I'm also watching tiny little wren creatures dancing on barbed wire. they look at me too, as if to say "look what i can do and you can't you stupid great lump of a creature."

am considering starting a nation-wide anti-cow-and-wren campaign. teach them to look at me in the (possibly) morning. i'm only just through my first coffee, for goodness sake. i'm in no fit state to be looked at by scornful and possibly psychologically damaged animals. i swear they're doing this on purpose.

the roses did it on purpose too. the deck i'm sitting on is surrounded by roses, all of them dead or dying. i can either choose to believe that they heard of my visit and were trying desperately to hold on for me and didn't make it, or they heard of my visit, went "aaargh" and carked it. prefer former option - choose to believe that.

right. now the important preliminaries are taken care of, i can tell you where i am.

I was exhausted and edgy and fed up with people, so i took myself off to a luxury cottage at Mittagong Homestead. It has a spa and a fireplace and an amazingly comfy bed, and it's just beautiful. well, with the possible exception of the arse-licking cow, which is fascinating, but possibly not "beautiful" in the traditional sense of the word.

i'm still having difficulty just sitting down and being peaceful. last night i found even when i was trying to relax, i had a hard time not finding things to do.

when i was lying in bed last night reading, i noticed my pulse and it was still racing. yes, i know all the dirty comments you could make, and i'm ignoring them all. i was reading a reasonably clean novel. i'm clearly more anxious and wound up then i had recognised, but i'm still not yet sure of the cause.

3:30pm-ish

i did check my watch that time, but only really to tell if it was getting dark yet, and should i light the fire. instead, i'm sitting with a cup of tea and a biscuit, writing. i'm just starting to slow down - well i was until i remembered i had to go home to melbourne tomorrow, and my stress levels jumped up again. anyway, the upshot of the whole thing is that i've booked for another night, and left a message at home to say i'm not coming back. i feel like one more whole day might help me to feel like i'm not going to miss out on things, so i'm more able to chill. well, it also means another night in the spa, and in front of the fireplace, and sleeping in that fantastic bed.

sometime later

fire lit. glass of wine waiting for me when i finish writing this, but i need to write it first.

all this superficial writing is a lot of fun, but it's not why i started writing a journal. I feel like i'm always hiding stuff now to protect other people. well, i need to write honestly even if it only goes to me.

i'm harbouring so much anger and resentment, and it's not like me to keep everything in like this, but i feel like i've talked and talked, but never really been able to say what i mean to the point where i think i've been heard and understood. i'm so angry about so many things, but at the moment the most important thing is the rocky state of liz and my relationship, and the fact that although i've forgiven her, i still haven't found a way to forgive myself for helping lead us both down such a destructive path. i think i've given out a lot of mixed messages, and i don't blame liz for not always understanding where i'm coming from, because it changes - or it used to. right now i think i'm in a much more stable place and my messages are more clear and consistent. for our relationship to survive, we had to separate a lot, and that's been very good for both of us. we've gone back to treating the car as "my" car instead of "our" car, and although it would be nice to feel like it was equally shared, but sharing is about an equal give and take. i know there are a lot of ways to give and in all other respects than financially, i see us as being reasonably equal. hmmn, ok, i probably need to think about that a bit more before making such a grandiose statement, but nothing jumps out at me. but the financial inequality thing is a big problem - or will continue to be unless we become a lot more open and honest with each other about it.

whew, ok. that's a bit better. nasty and painful, but the truth at least. liz, feel free to delete this entry if you want to, nobody needs to read it, i just had to write it.

liv

just checking

there seems to be a little problem with the last photos i posted - if you can't see them, click on the little x where the photo is supposed to be and they will come up.

scotty, are those photos good enough?

i got into lots of trouble for daring to place a photo of scott not being a dickhead on the site, so i hope i have rectified the situation to your satisfaction, babe.

liv

in this shot, scott has a gross thing on his tooth, and was refusing to get rid of it.  

ok scotty, as promised, i'm putting shots of you on here being a dickhead. i apologise for the previous photo where you weren't being a dickhead 

having trouble being honest

1 May 2006 5:27pm

some days the writing flows easily, some days it's hard to know where to begin. today even the pens i'm using are conspiring againsto me (hello paranoia).

i was adding some new blogs to the site today and realised they've been very superficial lately. i feel like i'm happy to expose myself publicly, but the last couple of months, which have been so full of anger, tears and fear, i find it very hard to write about because it means exposing other people publicly, and I don't think that's fair. i also don't really think it's possible to discuss the things i'm talking about without pretty much everyone out there working out who i'm talking about, so it's a weird trapped feeling.

anyway, that's the main reason for the sporadic updating recently. the things i feel are important to write about, they don't feel like my stories to share.

the last 2 months in melbourne have been both fantastic and awful. i feel really shitty about not being able to write about it. at the beginning of this trip, liz and i promised ourselves and each other to always be honest and open on this blog, kind of as a bit of an experiment as to what it feel like to have your thoughts and feelings publicly scrutinised, and hold no secrets, even when we knew it could hurt one or both of us.

right. i'm not going to do it now, but i'll see if either of us have the courage to write the full story of the last few months.

this is my favourite of the hundreds of shots of em and steve 

liz took this shot while i was driving - every now and then you get really lucky! 

keeping it in the family

29 April 2006 11:15am

The last few weeks have been pretty amazing, in good and sometimes not-so-good ways.

Where do i even start?

Work has been great - who would have thought I'd actually enjoy myself this much? I'm slowly starting to feel like I know what I'm doing again - no doubt I'll start feeling really comfortable then leave, but that's ok.

Things are definitely on the mend for both Liz and I. We're well, physically, we're both wokring full-tie, and getting to know our way around Melbourne, as well as finding another huge group of friends (these things always seem to happen to us...)

Our beautiful flatmate kelly moved out so we were very sad, but the gorgeously fabulous Luke Ferris moved in, so we were happy again - although since he moved in a week ago, I've not even seen him in passing. My brother Daniel is also living with Luke's sister, so we're all keeping it in the family. Strange to move to another state but keep hanging out with the same people. They're awesome people thought, so that's ok.

the equally fabulous Ming and Renee live around the corner, which is dreadfully convenient for Luke who plays in a band with them, and explains why we never see him. It was strange (in a good way) catching up with Ming again. we hadn't hung out for about 8 years, and it kind of feels like some strnge cycle is over. we're both very different people now, i think.

in a fairly significant development for me, and one i've very rarely spoken openly about, as a result of an eating disorders inservice i presented at work, everyone worked out their weight and BMI. i was astounded to learn, since being diagnosed with poly-cystic ovary syndrome about 2 years ago that I've lost nearly 20kg. The strange thing is that I honestly had no idea it was so much. i thought i weighed about 10kg more than i do. i'm being serious. This body image distortion thing is real - and terrifying. The fact that all the clothes I've bought recently have been size 14 should have given me a clue, i suppose, but i still couldn't see it. liz said the same thing - she doesn't remember what i used to look like. neither do i. the change has been so gradual (approx 1kg/month) that it's hard to notice. At least that bodes well for keeping it off. the upside of all this (not that there's a down side) is that i feel much fitter, healthier, more energetic and just pretty damn fabulous overall.

Liz, Ange, Mel A and I celebrated this (and Ange's first successful ultrasound - 9 weeks, 1 day) with the eating of pizza. hurrah!

ok, what else has happened?

I went to my first opera last night, and LOVED IT! it was The Rakes Progress, and Mel A, who's an opera singer with opera Australia, got me a free ticket. liz was exceptionally jealous as there was only one ticket and demanded a blow- by-blow rundown of the whole thing when i got home.

we saw kate and transport play, and got tiarad up again - the fabulous kate gave us free cds and free t-shirts, so we were well pleased. poor kate could barely speak the morning of her gig, but still performed. my boss martin went to the gig (odd to go gigging with your boss) and since then has been singing "blah blah" every time i see him, and raving about everyone. he even went and got kate's autograph at the gig. how cute!

by the way, both kate and em's myspace sites have some of our photos on them - kate's has a portrait i drew - and the transport site www.yetanotherband.com has a bunch of liz's photos on it, so check out those sites!

i also flew to adelaide for 4 days to spend Anzac Day with my family. it was great to see them all again - i've decided i quite like adelaide (to visit for a couple of months, not to live). mum and i spent lots of girly time together, and dad and grandpa did the march together for the first time, and i met some of their friends. for those of you from New Farm, I also caught up with Di LIlly, who looked great.

Oh, and how could I forget! Liz and I went to see Dylan Moran as part of the comedy festival - he was awesome. we do seem to be really making use of our time here and doing lots of stuff.

Whew! I'm sure i've forgotten lots of stuff, but that's the basic update. there really is a lot more to write about, but that can come later.

Thanks for sitting through all that - and enjoy the new photos! more still to come, it just takes a long time, and sitting in front of the computer is doing my head in!

love to all

liv

liv's favourite meerkat - so cute! 

liz's favourite elephant sitting thing kids toy type stuff at melbourne zoo. she really was a big kid that day 

at the butterfly house at melbourne zoo - they're attracted to the red hair 

our melbourne house. on the left is another row of houses whose walls all join together, on the right is a funny little alley way 

still making the film. this was about the point the boys realised we had major plot problems... didn't stop them, they just made it more obscure 

making our short film with greg and martin 

another liz arty shot - we seem to have hundreds of photos of green champagne 

the beginning of our paddy's day celebrations. hint for future paddy's days - green champagne looks and tastes great, but it packs a punch! 

the crowd cheering for kate at port fairy - yep, she's going to be huge! hurrah for everything 

liv and scotty at port fairy - one of very few photos where scotty is not being a dickhead 

liv and em at port fairy - there are hundreds of photos of em to choose from because she stole the camera